San Ramon Valley Democratic Club is pleased to welcome Paul Pierson, Professor of Political Science at UC Berkeley, speaking on Inequality and Public Policy. Pierson, who recently served several years as the chair of the Berkeley political science department, has written a number of books, including the New York Times bestseller Winner-Take-All Politics, co-authored with Jacob Hacker, political science professor at Yale.

We all know that the very rich have gotten a lot richer these past few decades while most Americans haven’t, and we know that concentration of wealth at the very top has soared. Winner-Take-All Politics shows that the rapid increases in inequality are not primarily due to the usual suspects – globalization of trade and finance, technological advances, or increased education at the top. Instead, the guilty party is American politics. Over the past 3 decades, big business and conservative ideologues have organized to develop and use political muscle to slash their taxes, deregulate the financial industry, keep corporate governance at a minimum, and make labor unions a minor annoyance. American politics has been the primary cause of this problem, and American politics will have to bring about the solution. Professor Pierson will give an update on political developments around economic inequality, and maybe we’ll get a sneak peek at his next book.

Paul Pierson is the John Gross Professor of Political Science at the University of California at Berkeley. Pierson’s teaching and research includes the fields of American politics and public policy, comparative political economy, and social theory. He has authored numerous books on American politics. His most recent book prior to Winner-Take-All Politics was Off-Center: The Republican Revolution and the Erosion of American Democracy (Yale University Press 2005), co-authored with Jacob Hacker. Pierson is also the author of Dismantling the Welfare State? Reagan, Thatcher, and the Politics of Retrenchment (Cambridge 1994), which won the American Political Science Association’s 1995 prize for the best book on American national politics. He has served on the editorial boards of academic journals, and from 2007 to 2010 he served as Chair of the Berkeley political science department. Pierson is also an active commentator on public affairs, whose writings have recently appeared in such outlets as The New York Times Magazine, The Washington Post, and The New Republic.

Please join us at 6:15 pm to talk about the latest political news or to just socialize and have fun.